Each
year, DISHS develops a “School Improvement Action Plan.” The
plan is developed using a process of continuous improvement. For the
past five years, DISHS has developed some school-wide goals to drive
its improvement efforts. At the end of each school year, the
school's professional staff “takes stock” of its progress
towards that year's goals. Data from a variety of sources is used-
any benchmarks that have been set in relation to specific goals,
student achievement data, and feedback from stakeholders (sometimes
formal and at other times informal) as well as other types of
qualitative data. The results of the Taking Stock session are then
used to identify goals for the next school year, and a School
Improvement Action Plan is developed over the summer for the coming
year. The 2011-12 School Improvement
Action Plan contains the same three goals and eight improvement
strategies which were identified in the spring of 2010 as part of
writing the School Improvement Grant. The three goals and eight
strategies represent a rather comprehensive school improvement
effort, touching on initiatives as diverse as basic skills attainment
to parent engagement and from standards-based practices to dropout
prevention. We feel that all of our goals and strategies represent a
multi-year improvement effort and therefore are revised from year to
year but we did not add or delete any in an effort to maintain
consistent focus on some high leverage goals. As you look at the “landing
page” for the School Improvement Action Plan, you will see the
three goals and eight strategies listed. There are links for each
goal which more clearly defines both what attainment of the goal will
look like as well as baseline data. Similarly, each strategy has a
link which will take you to the “action planning” page for each
strategy, including baseline data for the strategy, a benchmark for
2011-12, a list of concrete action steps to be taken to reach the
benchmark, and a summary of the work done in 2010-11 for each goal.
Much of the baseline data has already been reported to the board
previously (graduation and dropout rates, NWEA test results, etc.) so
it is mostly the 2011-12 benchmarks that represent “new”
information. Two
other efforts will have a major influence on the 2012-13 iteration of
the School Improvement Action Plan. The strategic planning process
will most likely provide some form of guidance, at least from the
“10,000 feet” level. It might also be possible and even
desirable for the strategic plans and School Improvement Action Plans
to function as an integrated planning system, much like Tiers I and
II in Doug Reeves' holistic accountability system. Also, DISHS's
participation in the League of Innovative Schools will require DISHS
to align its School Improvement Action Plan with the Global
Best Practices
document. Since DISHS already had a nearly finalized draft of its
action plan completed when the LIS got started, we are going to focus
on melding the two together this year and next. Much of the content
is the same, only the vocabulary and explicit reference to GBP are
different.
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